Midem Americas Salutes Afro-caribbean Music

June 27, 1999|By SEAN PICCOLI Music Writer

The capacity crowd at Amnesia, a Miami Beach disco, was not on the dance floor on Wednesday night; it was on the stage, where all 22 members of a musical group called Akiyo stood four deep and edge to edge, everyone dressed in flowing ecru, instruments tucked close to minimize bumping.

It was Akiyo's first-ever South Florida concert in a 20-year career. The Creole-language band from Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies, used intensely rhythmic music to coax a smallish audience of 200 people on to the dance floor, and did its best to keep the connection going between songs.

There were dozens of Creole speakers present. But the crowd seemed impatient to hear dance music, not repartee. Only a few people raised their hands.

"OK," Akiyo said with a smile and a forget-I-asked shrug. "Hi, everybody!"

Akiyo was one of three Creole bands from the Caribbean performing at Amnesia that night as part of "Mizik Kreyol LaKarayib," a showcase for the MIDEM Americas music conference, which was dominated by the buzz surrounding Latin pop but presented other styles of Afro-Caribbean music.

Conscious, perhaps, of the possibility that non-Latins might feel slighted, conference organizers declared African music this year's theme and changed the event's name from "MIDEM Latin American and Caribbean" to the less partitioned-sounding MIDEM Americas. A full three days of networking and nightclubbing around Miami Beach ended Thursday with a concert at the Gleason Theater by international flamenco-pop stars the Gipsy Kings.

Akiyo appeared between sets by Kanpech, a 10-piece Creole pop-rock ensemble from Haiti, and Martinique Swing Machine, whose rotating lineup -- anywhere from eight to 11 musicians -- played a colorful, up-tempo style of West Indies music called zouk.

But no group strove for cultural purity. Kanpech mixed English and Creole, a French dialect spoken throughout the Caribbean; rock guitar and reggae; bobbing Afro-grooves with arrangements familiar to any Top 40 listener. Martinique Swing Machine threw brass, new-school r&b, Creole rap and traditional zouk at the crowd -- sometimes all at once.

The music demonstrated a consciousness, if not a complete embrace, of the Anglo pop aesthetic, which has been adapted by Latin artists such as Ricky Martin, who has wowed non-Latins with his new English-language album.

The Creole-speaking world has its own crossover pop star in Wyclef Jean, a Haitian who came to America and co-founded the Fugees, the millions-selling hip-hop group that includes singer-rapper Lauryn Hill.

But the Caribbean musicians who played on Wednesday night were cool to any suggestion they might be poised to make the same leap as a Martin or a Jean.

Max Kiavue, a percussionist for Akiyo, said the "language barrier" would probably keep Creole pop off U.S. charts.

"The problem is a language problem," agreed Jean-Michel Mauriello, president of Hibiscus Records, a world-music label with offices in France and the West Indies. "But that's what MIDEM is here for, to make sure this music will get a chance to be heard everywhere."

One talent booker scouting potential acts at MIDEM said he rather liked Creole music's crossover chances.

"People are always looking for the next big thing," said Michel Jean-Baptiste, managing director of Crossroads Music in New York. "Before there was Latin, there was world music, and before that was hip-hop. It's just a question of identifying what they did right and duplicating it."

Sean Piccoli can be reached at 954-356-4832 or spiccoli@sun-sentinel.com.